HEY, KNOW WHAT'S A REAL MOVIE?

DIE, WHEN YOU WANT TO

“There was no air; only the dead, still night fired by the dog days of August. Not a breath. I had to suck in the same air I exhaled, cupping it in my hands before it escaped. I felt it, in and out, less each time…until it was so thin it slipped through my fingers forever. I mean, forever.” 

HEART TO HEART

On March 16, 1995, Terry Cottle shot and killed himself in the bathroom of the home he shared with his wife Cheryl. There had been an argument—there had always been arguments—and Terry had threatened himself with a gun just months before. Cheryl heard the shot from the other side of the door after watching her husband enter the bathroom with a .22. She heard him gasp “Help me, I’m dying,” and then he was gone. He’d fired a single round into his brain.

The only possible silver lining was that Terry, 33, had been in good physical condition—and an organ donor. Terry’s heart saved the life of 57-year-old Sonny Graham, who had contracted an incurable virus of the heart a year earlier.

In 1996, Sonny wrote a letter of appreciation to Terry’s widow, and though the donor procurement agency had advised against contact, they decided to meet. And when they did, Sonny fell instantly in love with the widow of the man whose heart now beat in his chest. “I felt like I had known her for years . . . I couldn’t keep my eyes off her,” Sonny told a local newspaper in 2006. They were both married at the time, but within a few years both had divorced, and they moved in together in 2001. It was a rocky relationship, just like Cheryl and Terry’s had been, but they eventually married in 2004.

Four years later, with no indication that anything was seriously amiss, Sonny’s life ended the same way Terry’s did—suicide by gunshot. The heart that had beat on for 12 years of borrowed time stopped beating for good.

Story source.

Text source.

REVIEW: THE DEAD AND THE DAMNED 2

You know what we need more of? Zombie movies. 

Just kidding!

But people keep making them. Thanks a lot, "The Walking Dead."

The zombie sub-genre is hard to get right. That show I just mentioned (perhaps you've heard of it?) is currently getting it wrong, as is...well, mostly everything else that contains the Z word. It's been a while since one came out that was even worth valid analysis. But that doesn't keep filmmakers from trying to make them.

The Dead and the Damned 2 (I have not seen the first one, though I sincerely doubt that matters) weaves together a cast of different characters coming together in the wake of a zombpocalypse. One of them is a former military soldier on a mission to lay his family to rest; another is a deaf girl being victimized  by decidedly non-zombie threats (read: redneck penis); then you meet an old man named Wilson living in a train car; and then we've got the immortal Richard Tyson as a fatigued police sheriff - so fatigued, in fact, that he's barely awake for any of his scenes. Naturally, all these characters come together and begin to rely on each other to survive the zombie-infested landscape their world has become. (Well, maybe not Richard Tyson, who shot one scene and fucked off from the rest of the film.) Along the way, some of these characters will be eaten like today's fricassee, and the ones that survive we'll soon "care about."

The Dead and the Damned 2 is not a good film, but that doesn't at all mean you shouldn't watch it. Entertaining for all the wrong reasons, it was a film made when a bunch of people were probably at the diner when one of them asked, "What do you wanna do now?" and someone answered, "We could make a zombie movie?"

And then The Dead and the Damned 2 happened. And we're all the better for it. It's sort of like the Forrest Gump of zombie films. It means well, and because it does, you give it a pass, but you just know there's not all that much going on upstairs.

(Zombie.)

The Dead and the Damned 2 is charming in its execution, although it's not trying to be. It's one of those accidental glorious train-wrecks that has to be seen to be believed. With a score clearly aping bits of the one John Murphy created for 28 Days Later, the "putting the family to rest" concept from the excellent Exit Humanity, and seemingly the amusing over-sized zombie head design from Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror, The Dead and the Damned 2 is a combination of everything zombie-related that came before it, only getting everything wrong to such a degree that it validates its own existence because of the sheer ridiculousness it creates. There's even a scene in a shopping mall, because, why not?

Sledgehammers slammed into pudding-filled rubber skulls and charmingly stupid zombie designs await you, as does the most non-confrontational attempted rape scene ever committed to digital, dialogue so awkward and unnatural that it sounds like it had been run through an online auto-translator, and even a scene where our deaf girl strips down for bed and the camera pans down ever so slightly after its operator realized not all of her bare boobs were in frame. There, now they are.

The Dead and the Damned 2 is an excellent time waster. Don't expect good and you'll have a good time.

And that's all I have to say...about that.

THE JUDAS CRADLE (OUCH)

 

The Judas Cradle was a torture device intended to slowly impale the victim. Forced down on the point of the pyramid by either ropes or weights, the orifice placed on the point would slowly stretch and rip. Judas Cradles were never washed, so if this slow torture didn’t kill, the infection afterward would.

Source.

ESCAPE

My stepfather always hated me. When my mother married him and he moved into our house, my life turned into a living hell. He finds fault  in every little thing I do, was constantly shouting at me and calling me names. For him, I can never do anything right.

Pretty soon, all of the chaos at home began to affect my school life. I found it impossible to study and my grades started slipping. At the dinner table, I was so nervous that I hardly ate a thing. I gradually withdrew into myself and stopped hanging around with my friends.

Things began to grow from bad to worse. I became my stepfather’s punching bag. He started beating me at the slightest excuse. He was a strong man and I was too small to fight him off. Each punch and kick he delivered hurt me both physically and emotionally. It wasn’t long before I was diagnosed with depression and the doctors put me on medication.

Through all this, my mother stood by and refused to intervene. She obviously chose her new husband over me. That hurt me more than anything else. I gave up hope and prayed for the day when I could escape.

One day, I couldn’t take it anymore and ran away from home. I made it as far as the city, when the police found me and brought me home. When they took me back to my house, my stepfather was standing at the door waiting for me. His face was twisted in anger and rage.

As soon as the police left, he turned to me and said, “Did you think you could escape?”

That night, he beat me twice as bad as before. I cried myself to sleep. After that, the violence escalated. Every evening when he came home from work, I tried to avoid him, but it was no use. He began inventing excuses to beat me up. I never understood how anyone could be so mean and cruel. It seemed like it was all a big game to him. Each time he hit me, I could see how much he was enjoying it. My body was covered in bruises that it hurt to breathe.

He eventually went too far. One evening, he beat me so badly that I couldn’t move anymore. I just lay on the floor of my bedroom, staring at the ceiling. I didn’t know it at the time that I was bleeding internally. My mother begged him to bring me to hospital, but he just ignored her. He said I was faking it. During the night, I lay on the floor of my bedroom, moaning in pain and slowly slipping into unconsciousness. The next morning, my mother came in to check on me. However, it was too late. I was already dead.

Time passed…

I don’t know how much time passed…

Suddenly, I saw a bright light.

I heard a voice announce, “It’s a healthy baby boy!”

I started crying loudly.

Slowly, ever so slowly, I opened my eyes.

A man and a woman were staring at me.

They were smiling from ear to ear.

The man leaned down and touched my cheek.

In a gentle voice, he said, “Did you think you could escape?”

Story source. 

AXE

PRESERVES

Photograph from 1873 of a body preserved in a bog. The body had been found in 1871 in the Heidmoor near de:Rendswühren and is now on display at Gottorf Castle, Schleswig Germany. Dated around 1st or 2nd century AD.

MACABRE ART: MURDER SCENE

© Dave Irvine

More.

THE TV PEOPLE

 

"To her, it simply is another child. To us, it is The Beast."

LETTERS FROM A KILLER

Judith Ridgway was married to serial killer Gary Ridgway, “The Green River Killer,” for 13 years before his capture. While in prison, Gary constantly sent Judith letters, sometimes up to three a day.

“I’d get ten letters and they’d get all stacked up and then I’d write maybe half a page back or something. And it was painful to write the letters to him. Because my life was gone.”

The words were so devastating to Judith that she stopped opening his letters. She took out a pen and wrote one final letter to him. She had a question - perhaps the most important question of all:

“One I was wanting to know about is if he was going to kill me too. But he never did answer that question.”

HEADLESS GHOST

The Columbian; September 28, 1899; Bloomsburg, PA

REVIEW: A HAUNTING AT PRESTON CASTLE

Every horror aficionado has his or her weakness - something that will make them ignore all the signs of something deplorably bad and force them to throw caution to the wind. Some folks are into zombie films, some vampire ones. For me, it's the paranormal. Don't ask me why, because I couldn't tell you. That bug has been there for quite a while, but it seems to have intensified over the years, quite possibly because of the really satisfying output of fantastic fright films: The Innkeepers, The Pact, Lake Mungo, and pretty much anything James Wan has ever done not involving Jigsaw or race cars.

There is always an ongoing quest to discover that next great film that will get under the skin and cause a nice rash of chills. I always like to believe that just because a film doesn't have a huge budget or an intense marketing campaign that it's not capable of providing as spooky a time as those other films made by notable genre filmmakers.

Having watched A Haunting at Preston Castle, I can only say...that quest will have to continue. As generic a concept as one can get, a group of spunky teens break into the allegedly haunted Preston Castle with a video camera to chart the legendary abandoned building, and who knows, maybe even capture proof of the paranormal. Bad acting, immature directing, and one hollow script later, you end up with something that makes you wonder when people are going to stop trying the same old things over and over before they realize it's already been done by someone with far more talent, money, resources, and yeah, passion.

A Haunting at Preston Castle is nothing more than a collection of irritating performances, a formulaic concept, and unintentionally hilarious ghosts. The only saving grace (though it doesn't save anything) is the legitimately impressive and creepy Preston Castle, a real place in California that used to be a reform school until it closed its doors in 2010. Since then, it's sat abandoned, falling victim to the elements.

When a building getting old and crappy without any effort from anyone or anything is better than the script a filmmaker sat down to write, or the performances one hopes the actors were trying to nail, well...that's embarrassing.

Do you like young attractive casts? Point of view camera work? Friends jumping out from dark corners to scare each other? How about a lot of giggling? Teen girls saying the words "fuck" and "fucking"? Or them smacking gum as they point the camera right at their faces? Intensely, absurdly, unbelievably unlikable lead heroines?

If so, A Haunting at Preston Castle is for you.

If you're fourteen or under, bring your hiding blanket!

For everyone else, just stream Grave Encounters again.

SIN EATERS

"In the county of Hereford was an old custom at funerals to hire poor people, who were to take upon them all the sins of the party deceased, and were called sin-eaters. One of them, I remember, lived in a cottage on Ross high-way. The manner was thus: when the corpse was brought out of the house, and laid on the bier, a loaf of bread was delivered to the sin-eater over the corpse, as also a mazar-bowl (a gossip's bowl of maple) full of beer, which he was to drink up, and sixpence in money; in consequence whereof, he took upon him, ipso facto, all the sins of the defunct, and freed him or her from walking after they were dead. In North Wales, the sin-eaters are frequently made use of; but there, instead of a bowl of beer, they have a bowl of milk. This custom was by some people observed, even in the strictest time of the Presbyterian government. And at Dyndar, volens nolens the parson of the parish, the relations of a woman deceased there had this ceremony punctually performed according to her will. The like was done in the city of Hereford in those times, where a woman kept many years before her death, a mazar bowl for the sin-eater, and in other places in this county, as also at Brecon, at Llangore, where Mr. Gwin, the minister, about 1640, could not hinder this superstition."

-- Aubrey of Gentilisme, MS. quoted in Kennett's Par. Ant. vol. 2, p. 276.

HELLO? YES, THIS IS APE

CINEMATIC DRACULAS

Hey, they forgot Dracula 2000!

I got ya covered, buddies.

#HALLOWEEN: NOVEMBER FIRST

#HALLOWEEN: FULL SWING

"And it was the afternoon of Halloween.

And all the houses shut against a cool wind.

And the town was full of cold sunlight.

But suddenly, the day was gone.

Night came out from under each tree and spread.”

Painting by Tom Shropshire.

#HALLOWEEN: ARRIVAL

“Shadows of a thousand years rise again unseen,

Voices whisper in the trees, Tonight is Halloween!”

#HALLOWEEN: HOUSE – PART 2

"Halloween House" by GrimmDreamArt.

RECOMMENDED HALLOWEEN VIEWING: THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW

Somewhere along the line, Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow became the official Halloween "story." Celebrated every October as regularly as A Christmas Carol is revisited every December, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow's association with Halloween simply just is. Funny, being that not only is the word "Halloween" never once uttered in the story, the events are also set about fifty years before Halloween ever traveled all the way from Ireland to American shores. Where it may lack in anything Halloween, it makes up for with its huge emphasis on autumn celebrations with no details spared on October foliage and (obviously period) culinary favorites to honor the season.

There have been so many print editions of the original story that it would be near impossible to collect them all. (I have this handsome edition specifically.) There have been dozens of iterations of this famous story, ranging from big budget Hollywood reimaginings to animated Disney shorts to an inspired episode on "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" Tall animated busts of the Headless Horseman can be found in Halloween stores and catalogs every year. 

Of all the different incarnations, this particular one is my favorite. This simple effort, that equates to nothing more than a slideshow featuring still art complemented by an adapted audio telling of the original text, was my first ever exposure to Washington Irving's tale, and it's stuck with me ever since having rented it repeatedly from the library when I was a lad. Confined to only a VHS for the past many years (having been out of print for most of its existence), a recent re-issue on DVD had me cautiously excited to revisit the film so many years later.

To watch it now is to be both charmed and slightly embarrassed by its simplicity. The text, as narrated by Glenn Close, is not that of Washington's original story, but a toned-down version more traditionally told to appeal to the young audience at which this presentation is aimed. While the paintings by Robert Van Nutt are eye-catching, and Close does a fine job playing multiple characters, I could see the Power Point-ish presentation turning off younger audiences used to more modern Pixar-ish animation. Still, the simplified adaptation takes no liberties, presenting the story as originally written. (Sorry, kids: there is no tree filled with heads, nor any sexy time between the Headless Horseman and his witchy subjugator. Nor is there anything nearly at the heights of absurdity as is currently going on with Fox's "Sleepy Hollow" series.)

"The old country wives, however, who are the best judges of these matters, maintain to this day that Ichabod was spirited away by supernatural means; and it is a favorite story often told about the neighborhood round the winter evening fire...The schoolhouse being deserted soon fell to decay, and was reported to be haunted by the ghost of the unfortunate pedagogue and the plowboy, loitering homeward of a still summer evening, has often fancied his voice at a distance, chanting a melancholy psalm tune among the tranquil solitudes of Sleepy Hollow."

If you've stuck with me for this long, you may have read my Unsung Horrors column on Lady in White, during which I muse on the importance of nostalgia as it pertains to my appreciation for Halloween. This particular video edition of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Rabbit Ears Entertainment goes a long way, as does Lady in White, in bolstering that nostalgic love. It may not feature heads flying through the air and Johnny Depp being Johnny Depp, but it does manage to be what I hope Halloween will be and how it will feel every year: perfect and pure.

BUY ME THIS: #HALLOWEEN T-SHIRT

Buy me a Halloween present.

#HALLOWEEN: WITCH-BURNING

Source via Pumpkinrot.

#HALLOWEEN: SAMHAIN

"In order to appease the gods, the Druid priests held fire rituals. Prisoners of war, criminals, the insane, animals...were burned alive in baskets. By observing the way they died, the Druids believed they could see omens of the future. Two thousand years later, we've come no further. Samhain isn't evil spirits. It isn't goblins, ghosts or witches. It's the unconscious mind. We're all afraid of the dark inside ourselves."

#HALLOWEEN: THE ROMAUNT

#HALLOWEEN: PUMPKIN CINEMA: THE BEST MOVIES FOR HALLOWEEN

Upon receiving a copy of Nathanial Tolle's Pumpkin Cinema: The Best Movies for Halloween for review, I immediately performed a cursory flip-through of the book to quickly and shallowly determine if this author was up to my level of authority when it came to Halloween-inspired films. (Yeah, I said it - I'm totally pompous like that.) I love both Halloween and film, so obviously this makes sense. After catching the inclusion of Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, I admit to rolling my eyes and saying, "Here we go - yet another project to shamelessly exploit the word 'Halloween' but misunderstand what that really means." Unfortunately (though not to me), this is how my brain works. I compartmentalize. I divvy and classify. If I want to watch something on Halloween, it has to feel like Halloween, or be about Halloween. So who is this guy telling me to watch the aforementioned bumbling duo take on a Universal monster? Or A Nightmare on Elm Street 3? Or fucking Cat's Eye?

Then I read the well-written and well-realized introduction in which the author painstakingly rolled out his criteria for what made something essential Halloween watching. Nothing too long, too moody, too depressing. Something fun, something to watch with friends, something that captures and celebrates the autumn season which we hold so dear. I realized that I maintained many of those same rules. The Monster Squad, for instance, is one I roll out every October for an annual viewing, but except for taking place in the days leading up to Halloween, doesn't have anything to do with it. And that's okay! It's about what feels like Halloween, and not what is.

With new enthusiasm to see what recommendations the author had up his sleeve, I dove into the book, which is divided into three main sections: feature films, short films, and television shows and specials; a generous offering of each is in place. Each section contains a mini synopsis, a review from the author, and intermittently, a brief justification as to why the film or show should be considered essential Halloween viewing. I was pleased to see the inclusion of Dark Night of the Scarecrow and 1993's Cartoon Network adaptation The Halloween Tree, but what won me over was the shout-out to Don Coscarelli's little known film Kenny & Company, a fun coming-of-age film not at all horror-related, but which takes place during the week of Halloween. It's an extremely underrated film from an extremely underrated filmmaker; seeing its place on the page was how I knew I was in the presence of a like-minded film fan. It was also nice to see the author recognize the artistic merits of the films (or lack thereof), even if he ultimately recommended them as Halloween picks: The Blair Witch Project is rightfully praised and Double, Double, Toil & Trouble is rightfully condemned. (But come on, man, seriously - Cat's Eye sucks.)

One of Pumpkin Cinema's highlights: while the Halloween series is understandably included, Halloween 3 gets the longest write-up, Halloween: Resurrection gets a one-sentence mention confirming its atrocious reputation, and Rob Zombie's stupidity doesn't get a mention at all. Needless to say, I want to be friends with Nathanial Tolle (athough Halloween 5 is ranked suspiciously high in the "best of Halloween series" list). 

Image source.

The book itself is assembled using high-quality, full-color pages, making for an attractive read. Some of the highlighted films will include a reprint of their original theatrical poster across one whole page, preventing a reader from becoming too used to the otherwise uniform flow of the book. The cover itself is kind of boring, and though, like our mothers once told us, we shouldn't judge any book by its cover, the cover itself also looks like something that was designed by our mothers. (Sorry, mothers!)

Additionally, though the author is clearly well-versed on the subject of horror cinema, he does make the occasional error. (The director of Lady in White, the very film I highlighted not even a week ago, is erroneously listed as Frank "DaLoggia" [it's LaLoggia]; the day of All Hallows' Eve is referred to as "Hollows'.") Still, what we've got here is a fine collection of films - some obscure and some not (plus The 'Burbs, the greatest film of all time) - that are certainly worthy of Halloween watching. The author makes a good point: the hours spent winding down from a long night of trick-or-treating or keeping your outdoor display of the macabre up and running hasn't left much time for an evening of Halloween-inspired films. Make sure you choose wisely. This night comes but once a year.

#HALLOWEEN: HOUSE

"Halloween House" by mannafig.

#HALLOWEEN: TEN LITTLE GOBLINS

#HALLOWEEN: THE MYERS HOUSE

"You're not supposed to go up there. Lonnie Elam said that's a haunted house. He said awful stuff happened there once."

#HALLOWEEN: TEXTASTROPHE

 

Source.

#HALLOWEEN: THE LONG NIGHT

“He had never liked October. Ever since he had first lay in the autumn leaves before his grandmother's house many years ago and heard the wind and saw the empty trees. It had made him cry, without a reason. And a little of that sadness returned each year to him. It always went away with spring. But, it was a little different tonight. There was a feeling of autumn coming to last a million years. There would be no spring."

#HALLOWEEN: UNSUNG HORRORS: LADY IN WHITE

Every once in a while, a genuinely great horror movie—one that would rightfully be considered a classic, had it gotten more exposure and love at the box office—makes an appearance. It comes, no one notices, and it goes. But movies like this are important. They need to be treasured and remembered. If intelligent, original horror is supported, then that's what we'll begin to receive, in droves. We need to make these movies a part of the legendary genre we hold so dear. Because these are the unsung horrors. These are the movies that should have been successful, but were instead ignored. They should be rightfully praised for the freshness and intelligence and craft that they have contributed to our genre.

So, better late than never, we’re going to celebrate them now…one at a time.

Dir. Frank LaLoggia

1988

New Sky Productions

United States

"The bells of St. Andrews were soothingly familiar, even in those strange surroundings. It wasn't long before I drifted off to sleep, comforted by their ancient voices. ...It was All Hallow's Eve, and I, still locked behind the cloak-room door, suddenly felt a wind sweep through the darkness, chilling me to the bone..."

Nostalgia. That, more than anything, is what fuels my love for Halloween. It's just a day on the calendar, of course, and one which I anticipate more than any other, but it's also a feeling. It's indescribable, intangible. Never more has a day been so ably defined by an entire scene found in paintings, photography, or hazy memories — sprawling pumpkin fields, forests filled with orange and golden leaves, red barns with white trim and a scarecrow poking out of the cornfield around back. This type of iconography triggers a feeling more than any other. It's wilderness, rustic, and somewhat uncivilized. It's an outlaw; a misfit. Halloween wasn't born in the streets or in a book. It was born outside under the moon, in the woods, amongst people honoring something bigger than themselves (with a little help from the Church). And like most holidays and traditions with ancient origins, it doesn't quite resemble what it once was. But it's still the closest. It changed over time because it's had to. To me, it's become rural America. Small towns. Main Street. Crepe paper on doors. Dead and dying leaves blowing across front yards. It's the end of summer and the pinnacle of autumn. It's changing seasons and changing leaves. It's embracing the night and giving yourself to the dark. And it's opening the front door to the vampire waiting on your front porch, who cannot enter unless invited. It's not lighting jack-o-lanterns or brewing the cider or smearing the greasepaint across your face that beckons another October 31st into being. It's anticipation. It's simply wanting it to be here and not wanting it to leave. And it's facing the fact that, sadly, as you get older, the things that used to bring you so much joy don't seem nearly as special as they used to be.

Nostalgia.

When I interviewed singer/songwriter Lonesome Wyatt for a 2013 Halloween post, his answer to one of my questions has stuck with me ever since: 

"The idea of Halloween is much better than the stinking reality."

He succinctly put into words what I'd discovered over the years as I found myself one year older every Halloween. As the years go by, it seems I foolishly try to force Halloween to feel a certain way, by the activities in which I partake or the company I keep or the foods and drinks (and pumpkin beer) I consume. More and more I am learning that this, not for lack of trying, doesn't work. Halloween simply was, and I've got to make peace with that fact. Instead of trying to make it feel the way I remember it being, I need to look back on the things I treasured that were synonymous with it.

Enter Lady in White.

It was Halloween. I was in fourth grade. I couldn't tell you what particular costume I wore that year, or what games we played at our class party. But I can tell you, at some point, the lights went dim, a television on a cart borrowed from the school library was rolled to the front of the room, and Lady in White was soon playing in front of us all. Though there's nothing inherently offensive or ghastly about the film, it was still an unusual choice to show to a classroom filled with elementary school students, considering the film features the ghost of a girl acting out her death and being strangled in mid-air as she screams out for her mother to help her, backseat assassinations, and ever-so-subtle allusions to molestation and sexual perversion. I sat rapt, my eyes glued to the screen, unable to help but immediately put myself into the shoes of the very young protagonist, who looked to be the same age as me. He was shy, and bullied, and he had an older brother who was sometimes his friend and sometimes his foe...just like me. It was Halloween in real life, but also in the film. The scenes involving the ghost of the departed took place in a school classroom, the very same place I was sitting.

At that formative moment, Lady in White was gospel.

Frankie Scarlatti, small-town native and successful horror novelist, is going home. Not home to Los Angeles, his present, but home to Willowpoint Falls, his past, where he lived as a child.

Following a brief monologue set in the present, it's back in time to Halloween, 1962, in Willowpoint Falls, where two brothers, Frankie (Lukas Haas) and Geno (Jason Presson)  race to school on their bicycles — from their rural farm where three generations of the Scarlatti family live and work, through the woods, and down to the heart of their quaint little town's main street, where they call hello by name to the people they pass. Shopkeepers decorate their front windows with bright and cheerful homages to October, and fill baskets with candy corn by the shovelful. Much like the charming name of the charming town filled with charming, small-town people, it is idyllic; nirvana; perfect.

"What's it like living in Los Angeles?" the cabbie asks in the present-day prologue as he drives Frankie home down clean quiet streets strewn with autumn leaves.

"It's...different," he answers.

"Yeah..." the cabbie says, as if to suggest no other place on earth could ever feel like home besides Willowpoint Falls.

Back in the past and later that day, once class lets out, two bullies trick Frankie back into their classroom's cloakroom and lock him in for a Halloween prank. After beating against the door, Frankie falls asleep...and later awakens when he hears the soft voice of a young girl. She's in the closet with him, singing and dancing — and Frankie can see right through her. Soon her singing comes to an end, as she begins fighting off an invisible attacker who has slowly begun strangling her. She eventually succumbs, and the sound of something small and metal bounces across the floor and into the floor vent. Frankie is understandably terrified...and it gets worse when someone else — someone quite real — comes into the very same closet with a flashlight, hunting for the very same object that bounced into the vent. Frankie is spotted and attacked by the man, eventually passing out. He dreams of the girl he just met and finds out her name: Melissa. She's looking for her mother, she tells him. And then he wakes up on the floor of the cloakroom, his father before him, a concerned cop shining a flashlight over both of them. The school is swept for suspects, and Harold Williams, the janitor — the black janitor — is arrested, though there is no evidence to suggest he was responsible. He is charged with the attack on Frankie, as well as for the murders of several missing kids over the last ten years, Melissa being the first. A sad end, it would seem, but at least an ending.

Until Frankie realizes that Melissa has followed him home.

Lady in White is an old-fashioned film made by an old-fashioned filmmaker. From what I have gathered, the film is somewhat autobiographical, and because of that personal connection, the film feels very personal. It's also kind of a peculiar final product in that the story seems to transform as the plot demands. Criticisms lobbed at the film call its plot confused and its tone uneven. I can't really say I disagree with either, as there are certain unfortunate plot holes, and the two bickering Scarlatti grandparents provide really the only comic relief in what is a pretty dour and dark film geared toward younger viewers. It's a strange hybrid of legitimate horror, fantasy, comedy, thriller, and Frank Capra. And it's about twenty minutes too long. At times it almost becomes a game of, "What else can we cram into this thing?" Despite that, the journey you'll take with this film is a strong one, and there are constant twists and turns along the way that you won't see coming.

Lukas Haas leads the cast as young Frankie, making his second appearance in a major film (the first being Witness with Harrison Ford). Though he still acts intermittently today, his roles have been mostly blink-and-miss cameos, like his turn as a union soldier in Spielberg's Lincoln, or as Failure from Inception. In Lady in White, he's all doe-eyed, big-eared, and pixy-voiced; he provides all the necessary adorable little-boy requirements to make for a sympathetic lead.

Alex Rocco, as Frankie's father, Al, is awesome, because Alex Rocco is always awesome. His voice is instantly recognizable, and his presence is both reassuring and intimidating. He seems to be the only adult in all of Willowpoint Falls vocal about Harold Williams' innocence and the audience likes him for it. Granted, the mystery of the killer's identity is kept a secret until the end, but we all know from the very start that Harold is not to blame — especially with some characters flat-out calling him a perfect scapegoat. (Why? "Because he's black!") Rocco brings a lot of weight to his role and embodies that kind of small-town father unafraid to speak up against bureaucracy. Plus, I mean, the guy played Moe Green in The Godfather. No shit he's awesome.

Lastly, Karen Powell as the titular lady has the least amount of screen time, but the most affecting performance. She is at once hauntingly heartbroken and eerily ambient. Her visage pervades as an urban legend, but she is quite real, and her pain is paramount.

So much of Lady in White rides on the imagery either eerie and beautiful (or both) that writer/director/semi-autobiographical-film-subject Frank LaLoggia creates. Nearly every other frame of the film could be captured, isolated, and hung on a wall. Alternately, every other frame feels like the nightmares you had as a child. Special mention must be made of Frankie's dream about his mother's funeral — everyone there is obscured by darkness and not moving an inch, giving their fuzzy presence a disturbing and surreal appearance, but their sea of hushed crying echoes throughout the church; the spotlight is on Frankie only as he peers into his mother's coffin. The geography of his dream doesn't make sense, as it has suddenly changes, and now he sees his mother sitting in a chair in the middle of an unfurnished room, a pair of double-doors wide open behind her, allowing in the sun and a sight of Frankie's father and brother having a catch in front of a sea of cornstalks.

"Don't leave me," he says to her.

"How could I ever leave you?" she responds.

Cut back to her funeral.

Ouch.

Strangely, given the kind of reputation that Lady in White has garnered (some people consider it a classic, and it currently boasts a very respectable 6.7 on IMDB), LaLoggia only ever made this, the pretty cheesy Fear No Evil before this, and a 1995 thriller that looks as if it went direct to video. Otherwise he's been fairly quiet over the years, and I wonder why. 

Lady in White gets all the credit in the world for having the balls, the gall, the nerve, to treat its kid audience like...gasp...people. There are a lot of heavy themes at play here: racism in "perfect" small towns, death of a parent, child murder, pedophilia. None of it's ever taken lightly and none of it is ever cheaply exploited. Though one could argue there's simply too much going on within the story (I would not fight you on that), all of these themes never feel extraneous. A sort of To Kill a Mockingbird with a supernatural twist, what begins as a ghost story soon transformers into a familial drama and an allegory for race, and then unfortunately devolves into a rather standard thriller on which Hollywood depended and still depends.

The visual effects on display are, twenty-five years later, almost laughably outdated, but they're not undone due to their ingenuity and construct. They're perfectly geared toward its young audience, almost comic-bookish in their design.

Ultimately, Halloween is a device that kicks off the strange and twisty-turny events that make up Lady in White (it's Christmastime exactly halfway through), but the supernatural elements are consistent enough to safely label it a horror film, and thus, appropriate for some Halloween watching. What keeps me coming back is the healthy injection of nostalgia and small-town Americana for which I yearn more and more as the years go by.

Lady in White isn't a perfect film, but the ambiance that it creates, and the feeling of childhood nostalgia it set out to establish, is.

My thanks to She Blogged By Night for the screencaps.